christie vilsack

School nutrition folks in Chicago have been busy. Last May, Chicago Public Schools (CPS) and locally-based Healthy Schools Campaign launched the city’s Go for the Gold campaign. The effort seeks to have 100 city schools qualify for USDA’s HealthierUS Challenge gold award. As part of that announcement, CPS revised its food menus and made other changes, as well.

Last week I attended a rollicking event on Chicago’s West Side.  Healthy Schools Campaign’s Cooking Up Change event—a benefit and competition between students to create healthy and tasty school meals—was attended by over 600 enthusiastic high schoolers, community leaders, local government leaders and Chicagoans with an interest in improving school meals.